Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday July 08, 2013 @07:51AM
from the in-today's-leaked-news dept.

andrewa writes "In an interview with Der Spiegel Snowden claims that the NSA, amongst other things, collaborated with Israel to write the Stuxnet virus. Not that this is news, as it has been suspected that it was a collaborative effort for some time. When asked about active major programs and how international partners help, Snowden says: 'The partners in the "Five Eyes" (behind which are hidden the secret services of the Americans, the British, the Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians -- ed.) sometimes go even further than the NSA people themselves. Take the Tempora program of the British intelligence GCHQ for instance. Tempora is the first "I save everything" approach ("Full take") in the intelligence world. It sucks in all data, no matter what it is, and which rights are violated by it. This buffered storage allows for subsequent monitoring; not a single bit escapes. Right now, the system is capable of saving three days’ worth of traffic, but that will be optimized. Three days may perhaps not sound like a lot, but it's not just about connection metadata. "Full take" means that the system saves everything. If you send a data packet and if makes its way through the UK, we will get it. If you download anything, and the server is in the UK, then we get it. And if the data about your sick daughter is processed through a London call center, then ... Oh, I think you have understood.'"

not at all surprised. some of us have been saying this kind of thing has been going on forever while all the while getting laughed at for being paranoid. But what I am really interested in is what now happens to Snowden. Russia said they would help him as long as he stopped leaking information. Will Russia do anything about this? or do you think it was just lip service??

No, Russia said they would give him asylum as long as he stopped leaking information. He withdrew his asylum request to Russia in response and so has opted not to take them up their offer in exchange to stop leaking, which is why he's continued leaking.

Russia views him as not their problem whilst he continues to not enter the country officially and if he continues to opt not to officially enter Russia then they seem to let him do whatever he feels the need to do.

And indeed he isn't. Nor should he in fact be a problem to the US. After all, a government that is doing nothing wrong has nothing to fear from whistleblowers.

Although I'm not a US voter, I am mightily disappointed in Obama's stance on this issue. His election platform was supposed to represent transparency in Government dealings, but instead he has perpetuated and compounded the worst excesses of the former Republican administration.

Not that I'm surprised, mind you. An election promise is as empty as a politician's soul.

It's no different here in the UK though, the Conservative part of the coalition government got into power in large part on a ticket of rolling back the surveillance state and excesses of the previous government but once in power it hasn't taken them long to push the interception modernisation programme from the previous government.

I think the problem is that it's easy to make promises when you don't matter, but once in power you have the likes of the security services lying to you - "There's a real threat t

This information has already come out. He entrusted multiple people with the data and others with the encryption codes. The order is that if anything happens to him, then the people with the codes give them to the people with the data. Some information has already been given to numerous members of the press in unencrypted form (such as the Guardian) and it was to be leaked slowly. The data that Snowden is carrrying is heavily encrypted and he doesn't have the keys, so the data is useless to Chinese or R

They can't because the world one learns about in law school, where courts are impartial arbiters of justice and where any tort deserves compensation, doesn't exist. We live in a world where Bush/Cheney's lawyers wrote the flimsiest of legal justifications for torturing prisoners and got away with it not because of their justifications but because of who they are.

Mossad is the sort of organization that will drive up next to you on a motorcycle in traffic and throw a magnetic grenade on your car. What are you going to do, sue them for wrongful death?

Mossad is the sort of organization that will drive up next to you on a motorcycle in traffic and throw a magnetic grenade on your car.

That's a bit crude by their standards. Mossad took out one terrorist by indirectly giving him a cell phone with a bomb, that could be dentonated remotely: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash [wikipedia.org]

Again Mossad is not the problem. In fact, the NSA or Mossad developing a virus to sabotage Iranian centrifuges or what have you is also not the problem. This is what spy agencies are for. The problem is when the NSA develops viruses which affect, or engages in espionage on, the US public. The NSA is not supposed to do that.

Again, I raise the analogy of the US military dropping bombs on US citizens; they don't do it because they're not supposed to. The same rules should apply to the NSA and its espionage bag

Sure, they can line right up behind the victims of Iran's and Hezbollah's terror attacks that tend to range from daily to weekly. Would you can to have your case heard after bombings, rocket attacks, hijackings, kidnappings or murders?

If someone downloads some hollywood movie; and your ISP sends a copy of those bytes to the NSA (or other-country's equivalent) for profit --- doesn't that mean the NSA just paid that person's ISP for a stolen copy of that movie?

Macomber: That is illegal.Kissinger: Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, "The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer." [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that.

Was this comment the only evidence that the past was anything but the story of the rule of law being strong and the government restrained in its activities, then I might brush it off, but I see little evidence that this has been anything but the standard MO throughout history.

Law is for the public, and things done in public. Law exists to be applied to the little people, as it is convinenet or profitable to do so.

What has changed is the little people, or at least the ones who care too, are able to see so much more than ever before. Over time, the ability of individuals to store and share information globally has reached a point that secrets are much much harder to keep, and so....when secrets get out we now get to view things that we never got to see before.

As we have seen with the legitimization of indefinite detention and dogged persual of whistle blowers is simply the result of a desire to not change but, to turn back time to a situation where the powerful could act with impunity and public opinion be damned and maliciously manipulated to the ends of those in power.

I knew that pretty much from the get-go. Only the truly deluded didn't immediately realize that Mossad and/or the CIA were behind that. Of course, there are always those idiots out there who reflexively deny that the U.S. government is behind ANYTHING--who seem to think that the tens of thousands of employees of the CIA and NSA just sit and stare at walls all day, I guess.

Just to clue you in on another obvious fact, for those of you who may have somehow missed this too: Mossad has been assassinating [cnn.com] Iranian nuclear scientists (with the CIA's full cooperation).

No, you strongly suspected that from the get-go. It was a good hunch which panned out. Many tech geeks understood this was likely, but most common folks didn't even know about it. Most press was happy to not make a big deal about it.

But now everybody knows what's been going on with near certainty (due to the corroborations, including Senators, lack of denials, and willingness to use a NATO air blockade, an act of war, to apprehend Snowden (just "a 29-year-old hacker")).

Everybody now knowing has changed the public debate, causing the Snowden Effect [pressthink.org].

The testimony of a former CIA/NSA employee with top-secret clearance and full access to the operations intelligence of said agencies doesn't count as "evidence"? What would you like, a signed and notarized admission from the CIA director?

You'd think it would be enough, but it isn't. Government security is such that you'd have to prove that he actually would have had access to that material. Even cleared people with admin access don't get admin access to *everything*. A real NSA employee or contractor could tell you a lot about what they are working on, but should not be able to tell you anything at all about any other program.

So, for his claims to be completely credible, you can't just assume that being in the NSA is good enough. You need to prove he worked on those specific projects, or alternately, that the security he worked under was lax. And assuming it was lax is not a simple assertion, there are whole teams of people who have nothing better to do than audit that security, and others that audit the auditors.

There is less proof of god's existence. I don't see him chasing around people who say stuff about him. The US government, on the other hand, seems to be extremely eager to get their hands on him and shut him up. That in itself is an implied admission of guilt, or they'd write him off as a crackpot just like all the other crackpots. When did you see a 9/11 truther get their passport revoked, get stuck in a foreign country's airport, and have presidential planes diverted just because of the possibility he could be on board? Never. Because those are real crackpots. But Snowden is dangerous to the government. That's proof enough.

Yes, I remember how the US reacted as if stung by a wasp to Europe's idea of making a special independant court in The Hague for war criminals. War criminals could be caught in every country on Earth and then brought to The Hague to be tried. George Shrub was so shocked that he even made a law that allowed them to take American war criminals from The Hague with force. A few months later smelly pictures began to appear from the Ghraib prison.

... if someone emails someone else a compressed (.zip etc.) file, do the computers automatically decompress it to examine it, or do they store only the compressed version?

I recall people using specially designed.zip archives which decompress to many times their original size (a 10KB file turning into a 100GB file, for instance) as a form of DoS attack. If the spooks have been lazy the same thing might catch their computers out...

This is to overload DPI gateways scanning documents for viruses, attacks or Data Loss Prevention (confidential documents being sent out, 80% of the time by mistake according to Check Point). They indeed unzip the archives since they need the uncompressed version of files to match them against known signatures, or even execute them in virtual environments, in some cases. Two easy tricks: put a password on the archive (they won't take the time to try and crack it, but might put it aside), or "overzip" it. The

An amazingly well written worm designed to target a particular brand of hardware PLCs that most hackers have never even heard of (and certainly couldn't afford), and not only target them, but target them in a way specifically designed to destroy the attached equipment under a VERY specific set of curcumstances.

That has "nation state" written all over it.

Not only that but it has "very high tech nation state" written all over it.

Basically about the only people with the will, the resources, and the ability are US + Israel. There's basically no one else that was likely to have done it.

But honestly, it was one of the most amazingly awesome high tech attacks ever perpetrated. I mean seriously they managed to successfully target machines that weren't connected to the public internet and physically destroy them.

The really impressive part of the attack to me was the physical intelligence involved. Whoever did this knew the entire architecture of the Iranian nuclear facility; not just what was connected to what, but down to the model numbers of all the equipement used.

I've always said, since the NSA is reading all of my e-mail anyway, the least they could do is filter out all the spam for me... If I could subscribe, via RSS from an NSA site, a.procmailrc; that'd be bitchin'...

I wonder how many of the software technologies that these agencies are using, have their roots in open source? Hadoop? Hbase? Hive? Mahout? It would be nice to see them publishing their developments back to the Open Source communities.

Its important to clarify what this system is intended to do, as im certain the government will furiously refute this new round of allegations...presuming mainstream media feels like covering this one
This is not, nor has it ever been about terrorism. Its about the maintenance of power, wherein terrorism is a convenient excuse as it directly challenges and undermines a governments authority. All legitimate challenges, be they from disenfranchised middle eastern nationals or occupy protestors, are now taken very seriously. The middle east questions everything from the well established narrative of american freedom in the context of guantanamo bay to the carter doctrine of foreign imperialism and Israeli occupation each time a bombing or attack is successfully affected. People begin to ask why we are being attacked, and the excuse that terrorists "hate our freedom" becomes less effective with each blast that rocks a city as more of its citizens learn about the home state of the bomber, her motives and objectives and most dangerously, the full context under which america became a part of it.

the occupy protests question the narrative of the american dream in the context of class stratification that is so rife with inequality it guarantees forty percent of a worlds wealth is concentrated amongst one percent of its wealthiest inhabitants. Bank foreclosures and unemployment can only be explained by "economic downturn" and "irresponsible homeowners" so many times before the answers do not work anymore, and with each march or sit-in a protest gains momentum to change this class stratification. protests like occupy work to force a ruling class to remain under scrutiny or crush dissent. Crushing dissent is a force multiplier however, like water on a grease fire, and merely galvanizes your opponents. Ruling plutocracies cannot tolerate sustained scrutiny.

the middle of the road is simply surveillance. Find the organizers, topple them first, and the dissent never has an opportunity to interrupt the american "dream." pre-emptive detention of G8 protesters, flypapering articles about how much americans think Snowden is a traitor, and manufacturing crimes against peaceful demonstrators is much more efficient and effective. you contol the outcome of the detentions, and without a rally point protestors are supplanted by media reports of valiantly thwarted attacks by the TSA or FBI. Snowdens security state, as its been exposed, also serves also to galvanize more severe convictions against protestors by providing nearly infinite evidence of any crime the prosecution so wishes. its a slightly larger padlock by which political and social unrest is quelled. it is our form of political prisoner.

to fix it not only requires expunging elected leaders but cutting the feed bag from a society that largely reviles the poor and champions the rich, and consents to warrantless search so long as they have enough room on the DVR to still make it home in time to catch up on Big Bang Theory. We must begin to ask uncomfortable questions: Why are people rich, what is the longstanding history of our foreign policy and its potential future ramifications, why should corporations be given say in politics, and why do we need a deep-rooted surveillance system to combat something that kills orders-of-magnitude fewer people each year than heart disease?

I find it comical that people are still arguing over the validity of Snowden's claims, as he continues to be hunted down by the very government who is attempting to dismiss him as a mere nothing.

Perhaps the governments stance to dismiss this as nothing (at least on the surface) has merit, for the government knows that no matter how alarming, no matter how bad the breaches of privacy are or has been, citizens simply don't give a shit enough to care.

And the government knows this. So do many major companies, which is why they continue to operate the way they do (yes, AT&T I'm speaking to you and your recent surcharges that generated hundreds of millions...yes, I'm speaking to you Facebook, and your gall to start charging to put an email where it belongs).

Why do governments and corporations act in this arrogant way? Because they know that no one gives a shit anymore.

Apathy will be the demise of all privacy and Rights as we know them today. I promise you that.

And regardless of Snowden's claims, proof, facts, or evidence, not a damn thing will change for the better. Not a damn thing.

Or maybe Snowden was working at a higher level than the US government has admitted.

Or maybe Snowden simply used the skills he was taught to use against the Chinese against his own government.

Either way, what he says has enough validity that world leaders are listening and issuing formal statements over it, and the US isn't denying it, so it's obviously got a reasonable degree of validity to it and isn't just about parroting speculation like you claim.

Also keep in mind that when working in government or other institutions in various support roles, there are jobs where you can have access to all kinds of things. Serving in the military I had a job like this, with nearly full access and permission to enter whatever spaces. (Some still required attendance by a person of higher or different clearances though, it wasn't all open-door. But I could pull papers, state reasons, and be backed up by superiors in my department.) However despite all the things I had physical access to, doing stuff like equipment validation while using fairly complete manuals, I wasn't too terribly nosy about things. (Of course being purposely not-nosy helps to stay out of trouble along with not having the greatest long-term memory when it comes to various details. Agreeing to confidentiality works in more than one level that way.)

I'm sure the same would also apply to IT, communications specialists (like Manning), or people like yeomen or secretarial staff. Very easy to have access to more than what your own clearance calls for, but most people stay out of trouble by keeping to one task and tuning out all the other stuff. (Keep in mind how bureaucratic systems work. Like recent news that has gone public in relation to leaks military people aren't allowed to see it for classification reasons. It's typically better to avoid the hassle.)

Of course then you have people like Snowden who take advantage of the situation. There's only so much manpower, and by trusting people to stay on task, they don't really watch everybody and what they may pick up on the side. Whether that's for better or worse, who knows? (But some of the CYA stuff really is in violation of the public trust for those in authority to do the right thing. Doing stupid shit and covering it up only serves to eliminate any moral or ethical higher ground you may have been considered to have stood upon. How about staying clean and not doing it in the first place? That really would have been the easiest way to prevent leaks that harm reputation. But nope, people still get caught doing shady crap, and the first response is to go and shoot the messenger.)

Having got security clearance and worked on defence projects for a third party contractor in the past myself I can say with absolute certainty that compartmentalisation in the security services isn't as good as his computer games, movies and spy thrillers would have him believe.

When Chinese hackers stole a load of information about the F-35 it wasn't because they pulled off some righteous hack that required skill, perseverance and a high degree of technical knowledge, but precisely because protection of such sensitive data is sloppier than the good practice guidelines claim it should be.

When Chinese hackers stole a load of information about the F-35 it wasn't because they pulled off some righteous hack that required skill, perseverance and a high degree of technical knowledge, but precisely because protection of such sensitive data is sloppier than the good practice guidelines claim it should be.

I worked for the US military many years ago as a civilian programmer and I'd agree with this based on what I saw. I don't want to embarrass the particular branch of the service by naming them, but I used to say that their motto ought to be "Using yesterday's technology today" based on how many antiquated computer systems we had to work on and support. We actually had a system that still used punch cards and when I was in college the course books were already beginning to mock punch cards as being ancient technology. I can say that the government really doesn't want to be incompetent and have bad security, but the powers that be have too much blind faith in civilian contractors and Snowden burned them very badly as a result. The lesson that should be learned from this is exactly what Congress has been saying for years - "We need fewer non-government employees with access to these sensitive programs and their data" - but you'll be able to knock me over with a feather if there's a decrease in contractors as much as 10% as a result of this.

"but I used to say that their motto ought to be "Using yesterday's technology today""

It's a problem here in the UK too. Case in point, I believe in the UK the MoD or at least The Army is still standardised around IE6, there has been talk for years about upgrading but I still do not believe it has happened yet.

Bradley Manning is another good example, he was working at a field base in Iraq yet not only did he have access to military cables for Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Apache video, he also had access to diplomatic cables from embassies across the globe. All this despite being a low ranking bottom of the pile private on a pretty basic wage.

This alone shows what an utter farce the GP's claim is, there's been plenty of evidence that compartmentalisation in the US security services is far better in theory than it actually is in practice.

Hell I got an even better example...has everybody forgotten how the plans for Marine 1 (the POTUS personal chopper) ended up on fricking P2P already?

As somebody who used to work corporate i can say that a LOT of the so called "high level access" stuff is frankly pretty damned easy for somebody on the inside, especially somebody in IT, to get access to. Never forget folks how damned easy it is to become complacent in an org, you see the same guy day after day and people automatically assume "well i'm sure he

You realise that some of the people carrying out extraordinary rendition to black sites, something that's established fact, not spy fiction were also contract employees right?

The US has been using ever greater numbers of contractors since 9/11 for a combination of the fact that many politicians have shares in said companies so it profits them directly and also because it provides a layer of deniability should it come back to bite them - "Oh we had no idea the contractors were doing that!". The third and final reason was simply that private sector could scale faster than existing public sector organisations after the massive influx of security spending post 9/11. None of which means that they have any less access to secretive material, in fact, given the sort of risky operations they're using contractors for it's often the contractors that are engaged in the really dirty stuff the government doesn't want to get directly implicated in.

That and the fact that Snowden wasn't always just an external contractor of course, he did actually work at the NSA for some time.

It's not about me reading spy novels (I've never read a single one, don't interest me), it's about your naivety and lack of understanding of the structure of modern military and security operations by government. Or to cut a long story short, you've obviously just not been paying attention this last 10 years.

Information about stuxnet was already leaked to the press and allegedly by retired Marine General James Cartwright. I think it is more likely he is just repeating what he heard speculated in the news already and tried to use his former position to give himself credibility. According to the Der Spiegel article they were trying to evaluate if he was truly a NSA whistleblower, so they submitted some questions to him via email and received his prepared answers. He had plenty of time to look for information alre

The paper must not have thought much about the credibility of their informant since they chose not to run the story until after Snowden made himself known to the public in Hong Kong.

Wow, its like your only objectively reality is that Snowden sucks.

First it was Snowden doing whatever he could to keep publicity on himself and when that theory went over like a lead balloon you trot out the exact opposite. Now it isn't Snowden's decision to hold off because he sucks, it's the newspaper's decision to hold off because he sucks.

The important part of coming up with an explanation is that it must include the fact that Snowden sucks, everything else is mutable...

Snowden is not really revealing anything that is not widely known. He's just sensationalizing it. Low level access like Snowdens is a general knowledge of whats going on. High level access would be specific knowledge of results and what those results are achieving, which it seems Snowden doesn't have.

I'd personally be a little disappointed if a Western Intelligence agency wasn't making every effort to data farm all communications in and out of the country. However the counterpoint to this is that individual

Secret laws, secret evidence, it's all unprovable bul**hit.There really hasn't been a noticable change in the number of 'incidents' after the creation of the NSA to before the creation of the NSA.Of course the NSA 'claims' they stopped stuff, but they can't tell you what or they'd have to kill you. Yeah, right. Excuse me, the B.S. detector is red-lined and pegging.Can you trust the NSA? Not in the slightest.Can you trust Snowden? Unknown, but his 'revelations' have really put the NSA into a frenzy, which i

So, how did bugging the EU office in DC ward of terrorists? Do you flip open the "good citizen manual" and invoke the next boogeyman on the list to explain that one away?

That's pretty much business as usual, spying like that has been going on for centuries and the US is not doing anytying especially unusual. While embasies are theoretically off limits they do get penetrated and the US has bugged embassies before, even those of it's allies. Most embasies have a faraday cage in the cellar where sensitive discussions get held and most offices get swept for bugs regularly. Even mildly sensitive phonecalls do not get made anywhere near a window and anything down to mundane items

NSA security was "magic", just like East German spies in the West could be assured that their details would never be lost.
The "magic" both sides used was simple. Every project was cut up into tiny details no one person could walk out with.
Why was this done? East German lost its spy network list after a trip to West Berlin by one person who requested their own exit visa.
After that East Germany got very creative with putting a spy codename, address and ongoing mission into massive near useless paper file

It isn't magic, but it *is* supposed to be compartmentalized. That's the whole "need to know" situation. There shouldn't be a bunch of files for various classified programs sitting together in the same place or even on the same segment of the network for him to just grab.

Perhaps, as an admin, he did have access to multiple systems, or perhaps the compartmentalization was lax or failed, but even a TS/SCI clearance and admin access to hosts for one program isn't supposed to grant you access to all NSA programs. Government security, even government contractor security, is supposed to be very careful about specific requirements about networks, data access, and even facility security.

That's why some people are incredulous that Snowden is suddenly able to spout off about all sorts of programs as if he had all that data. Even with his elevated access, he should not have been able to comment authoritatively on anything but what he was working on directly.

I am not going to be incredulous by default. It may be possible he does know these things, but the assumption that just because he have "privileges" with some NSA programs does not make him an expert by default on all of them. He should have only been able to see what he was working on. So, if there is one thing that I do want to know from all of this, it might be whether their security was lax where Snowden was working.

My personal experience is that people take security clearances very seriously. My father was a civilian engineer for a contractor that built the Trident submarines, which carry Polaris nuclear missiles. He designed some of the systems.

I just told you everything I ever learned about what my father did for a living.

Re "suppose to be highly compartmentalized" would be for per person clearance and project access.
Snowden was not just a person on the Russia desk, a cryptologist, translator or other user of the NSA cloud.
Over time he would have come to understand that searches would lock down or trigger investigations.
As an admin tasked to look after networks/cloud and connect or disconnect users to a certain clearance level - he would have come in allowable contact with a lot of projects for a short time.
How or why th

You would be surprised how many would go to great lengths to deny U.S. and/or Mossad involvement, even on/. Some even went as far as claiming that Iran had done it to *themselves* to elicit sympathy. When you're truly deluded, you can convince yourself of anything, no matter how illogical.

Maybe they are hunting him down for divulging information about the email surveillance program that he was under contract to interpret the information. This one fact that he revealed doesn't make the other facts any more credible. It is more likely that his 15 minutes of press exposure is almost up and he'll claim to know more than he actually knows to either remain in the spotlight or make himself appear more valuable to potential host countries.

Latin American Presidents would have just "had an accident" during the Cold War for a stunt like this.

I believe at least one African head of state met his demise this way, so yeah.

Because he WILLINGLY SIGNED UP WITH A SPY AGENCY...

He signed up with Booz Allen to work at the NSA. When I signed up as a contractor to work at ExxonMobil, it was to fix broken tech., not to accept responsibility for the Exxon Valdes, et al. Snowden is a civilian, not a spook. This why he couldn't use whistleblower laws for protection (as if they're any protection [wikipedia.org]).

Because he WILLINGLY SIGNED UP WITH A SPY AGENCY, and accepted the responsibility for secret clearances, and that's how they handle "leaks".

I'm pretty sure the NSA et al. were already spying on him among everyone else before he joined the NSA. If the NSA was leaving everyone alone and then Snowden signed a contract with them, then you might have an argument for holding Snowden accountable to the contract.

As it is, since the NSA was the one who chose not to play nicely, anyone else can and should do whatever the hell they want in retaliation.

Maybe they are hunting him down for divulging information about the email surveillance program that he was under contract to interpret the information. This one fact that he revealed doesn't make the other facts any more credible.

Of course it does, that is the basis of all human trust relationships. If you tell me true things, and I've never caught you in a lie, then that makes you more believable. It doesn't make me automatically accept everything you say as fact, but it means that I trust you more than I otherwise would. So in fact that one fact does make the other facts more credible. However, it wasn't just one fact. He got the EU to search all their offices for bugs. If they had found nothing, I'm sure there would be a lot of European countries who would be happy to score a mountain heap of brownie points with the US by saying so and thereby discrediting Snowden. They haven't said so. He so far has a perfect record. He is now the single most believable source on secret government spying that you have ever had access to. That could change, but for now it hasn't.

The UK has no interest in dumping money down the well like they've had to with Assange.

Ha ha, very funny. Please explain why the UK HAD TO dump money down that well. I suspect there's a bully "across the pond" that's threatening them to do so based on some under the table "special relationship" handshake which neither would like to openly admit to, because it would confirm for ALL to see that one party is a pawn and the other is a bully. That would make them both look pathetic should it ever manage to make it onto the nightly news.

" The UK has no interest in dumping money down the well like they've had to with Assange."

Yeah, like money is all that matters to them.

Again, I ask people to look through past posts of "Cold Fjord" and look for patterns. They're pretty easy to spot. Once you've done that, please take a look at the document linked in my forum signature and compare the tactics outlined in that document to the tactics used in posts by "Cold Fjord". Look closely at the wording he uses. Come to your own conclusions.

No, given the fact that travelling from point A to point B through country C means that you are in country C's airspace, then country C can deny you use of their airspace unless you comply with their conditions.

That said, there are agreements that countries have signed regarding use of airspace, so this is indeed highly irregular, even if it is not actually an act of war.

What would be an act of war is attempting to apprehend that world leader or probably to remove materials belonging to them which were property of the diplomatic delegation. It is not clear to me if Snowden himself would have been so protected. My guess is that he could have been removed from the plane, or a standoff might have ensued to get the Bolivians to hand him over. I can't see that having a happy ending for anyone, so I am not sure what they would have done even if he was on the plane.

And to be sure, while we don't feel threatened by Bolivia, there is a lot more at stake in removing their president from his plane than simply the threat of war with Bolivia. Such an action could open up harassment of US diplomats all over the world. Presumably, these consequences must have been understood and deemed acceptable, but I would love to hear their reasoning.

If true, then the NSA has a really big security problem.Snowden was a contractor, I could see him getting access to the stuff that he is working on, which would be enough to get him into the trouble he is now. But for him to have access across all areas and departments. There is a serious problem with NSA internal security.

At this point, I'd say he's proven himself to be a credible source. Confirming something that was already believed to be true doesn't change that, or make it any less true.

Actually no. Confirming something **believed** to be true is a tactic of deception, a tactic of creating the **perception** of credibility. Perception may not match reality.

In truth, extraordinary claims without an explanation of how such information was obtained is a warning sign. How would a low level employee dealing with email surveillance know anything about stuxnet? Frankly claiming such knowledge without any real proof or credible explanation reduces his credibility.

In truth, extraordinary claims without an explanation of how such information was obtained is a warning sign. How would a low level employee dealing with email surveillance know anything about stuxnet?

I think that falls into the same category as: How would a low-level employee bring on a world-wide hunt on himself? How did he get the president of Bolivia forcefully grounded and searched on a mere suspicion (which turned out to be incorrect) that Snowden may be hiding aboard?

In truth, extraordinary claims without an explanation of how such information was obtained is a warning sign. How would a low level employee dealing with email surveillance know anything about stuxnet? Frankly claiming such knowledge without any real proof or credible explanation reduces his credibility.

As was pointed out above how did a buck private in the Army posted in Iraq (Bradley Manning) get access to diplomatic cables? Because not only is the system corrupt and criminal, it has the actual security

In truth, extraordinary claims without an explanation of how such information was obtained is a warning sign. How would a low level employee dealing with email surveillance know anything about stuxnet? Frankly claiming such knowledge without any real proof or credible explanation reduces his credibility.

As was pointed out above how did a buck private in the Army posted in Iraq (Bradley Manning) get access to diplomatic cables? Because not only is the system corrupt and criminal, it has the actual security of an unlocked screendoor.

Note that I said extraordinary claims should be accompanied with evidence or explanation. Manning provided the evidence. He did not merely make a **claim** about what was in diplomatic cables, he provided the cables themselves.

Assuming that Snowden had access to stuxnet because Manning had access to diplomatic cables is a huge **leap of faith**.

Diplomatic cables are routinely shared with the military and intelligence agencies. Why would this suggest that the stuxnet team would be sharing its work with

.. and if he were to disappear, do you think anyone in public office would give a wet slap? We've had a steady stream of nuclear scientists, environmental scientists and people working in the field of genetics to die in mysterious circumstances over the years, and once they disappear it doesn't take long for the memories to fade.

Re 'citations please' by the AC:
Costas Tsalikidis, the Greek telco whistleblower was found hanged in his apartment.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kostas_Tsalikidis [wikipedia.org]
Exposed tapping mobile phones of members of the cabinet, the Prime Minister, and hundreds of others via foreign “interception” software.
Adamo Bove head of security at Telecom Italia who exposed the CIA renditions via cell phone log in court ‘fell’ to his death.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISMI-Telecom_scandal [wikipedia.org]
Illegal domestic surveillance program on politicians, magistrates.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the D.C. Madam was found hanged.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Jeane_Palfrey [wikipedia.org]
David Kelly and the prewar intelligence Britain had on Iraq.

Eh no. Snowden told everything when they did the interview, the papers who got their questions answered are just sitting on it in order to let the information trickle out over the summer - all in an effort to stay relevant for longer. The people's watchdog my ass.

Stop fucking focusing on the person and look at the facts instead. If what he has leaked harms the US government or any other government, so be it - you reap what you sow. Snowden would not have any means to harm the US if the US had not conducted itself in a way that left it open to harm. Shut the fuck up with this person pro/con agenda.

The messenger always has as much to do with the facts as the facts themselves, as well as how they project the facts. Get a report that global warming has been overstated? Might want to check to the back of the report to see if the words "Koch Brothers" are somewhere in there.

Got a poll saying that Americans think unions cost jobs and can't be trusted, might want to see if the Chamber of Commerce wrote it, got a sensationalistic headline that 1 in 4 Women have been raped, might want to find out how those facts were come up it and who came up with them (NOW, and included things like having sex after having 2 Aspirin or Tylenol).

You can't separate the message from the messenger or the facts from the source. That's why scientific data is considered worthless if it can't be repeated completely independently. You need to know the methodology, you need to know the circumstances, the motive, the chain of custody, you need to see if there is corroboration or not.

Now I realize none of this applies if your trying cause political damage where evidence doesn't mean a damn thing and your simply trying to slander someone. After all when your trying to do political damage the facts don't matter and if they come out later well it's too late. Now, if you actually give a damn about the truth, than you'll care about everything I said.

True, any information you get must be run through the bullshit filter, and that includes evaluating the source(s), this is taught in high schools - at least where I come from, although it may have changed, it's been a while.

Science isn't produced by people, it is discovered by people. It doesn't matter who reports the facts, because the funny thing about facts, and the reason the scientific method works, is that they don't care what you think about them, they just are. You can reproduce someone's experiment, or you can't.

This situation is unique though, since Snowden hasn't produced the information, only handed it over. We can eliminate everything he says and still have a treasure trove of information available. That is my point, and one I get modded down for on a regular basis, that's ok though, karma is not important for anything other than mental masturbation.

The debate needs to shift from Snowden this, Snowden that, or any other figurehead, because it detracts from the actual substance of the case. If what he leaked is damaging, it is because people in power did things that were damaging, not because someone exposed it. You also need to get over yourself and realise this is not about the rights of the American people, but the rights of everyone, everywhere. Frequently, only the American side of these leaks are discussed, but that is only part of the story, and only the tip of the iceberg.

"It's very unlikely that one 22 year old contractor would have access to every secret inside the NSA"

As a sysadmin, do you have access to every secret your company or organization has? No. Do you have access to some of them? YES.

He doesn't need to have access to every secret at the NSA. Anyone who works for even a few years in an administrative capacity at any organization has probably absorbed enough dirt to at least embarrass them slightly. Which is all he has done really.

The problem here is that there aren't any appropriate channels. Secret agencies, acting under secret laws, overseen by secret courts, where does one blow the whistle? His only course of action was to report potential (likely) constitutional violations to the same people who put them into place or to go public. Several NSA whistleblowers have already gone the former route and they got nowhere.